


You Were Born With Ten Fingers and You're Gonna Use 'em All

by PazithiGallifreya



Series: Lady Cadash [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Family Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-21 02:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: Me and my cousins and you and your cousinsIt's a line that's always running(in which Cadash learns that the past rarely rests in peace)





	You Were Born With Ten Fingers and You're Gonna Use 'em All

“ _Bartrand, how can you say that? She's just a baby!”_

“ _I didn't sign up for this shit, Orla. Shit, looking after my kid brother's bad enough, The last thing I need is another Stone-forsaken brat trailing after me. I told you what to do months ago. I'll be back in a few weeks. Deal with it.”_

” _Bart, you can't just walk away from--”_

“ _From what? Is it even mine? You know what, forget I asked, I don't even care. We talked about this. At great length as I recall. Orla, we had a good thing, you and me. It's up to you if you want to keep it a good thing. I've got business to deal with. So do you.”_

_Orla watched in stunned silence as Bartrand Tethras walked out of her cramped one room apartment, slamming the door behind him. Dari Cadash woke up in the rickety old cot that a sympathetic neighbor had given to her mother, and bawled._

 

* * *

 

“Ah, shit.”

Varric read through the stack of letters again, hoping that parts of them would rearrange themselves and become something else. He had never been any good at dealing with crap like this.

Technically, Bartrand was still the head of House Tethras. He’d been in the Chantry asylum for, what? Over a decade now? His brother had calmed down over the years, but he was still living in a state of more or less permanent confusion. Sometimes he was lucid enough to know who he was. On rare occasions, he recognized Varric.

But Varric had been running the business of Tethras by proxy for years. He’d managed to wrangle the Merchant Guild’s lawyers into giving him full joint ownership of the family’s estate just two years ago. He was already the next in line to inherit it, should Bartrand pass, but there had been difficulties in getting certain things done. Getting Bartrand to sign contracts as Head of House, for example, required a great deal of patience. His cousin Thorold had gotten quite good at convincing Bartrand to put pen to paper, although it usually required the patient repetition of some very simple fictions. It was a bit underhanded, but business was business and shit needed doing, or the family coffers would run dry.

Varric had swiftly ended a few ventures of his brother's that had been, in his estimation, too immoral to countenance, even though they had been quite lucrative. Varric was no saint and not exactly opposed to a bit of creative bending of the law where it was convenient, but he wasn't going to let the House of Tethras be involved in the slave trade either. He'd taken a lot of shit from some of the less scrupulous cousins over that, but he had enough dirt on all of them to keep them obedient enough, if grumbling. Not that he didn't keep a close eye on his own back these days.

Finally, though, after dragging some of the Guild lawyers to Bartrand’s bedside he'd convinced them that his brother was, in fact, not legally competent to do much more than vacillate between jumbled ranting, outbursts of violence, and smiling blankly at the Chantry sisters while he asked them, for the eleven thousandth time, where was he and where were Mother and Father and what was that empty blue thing outside of his window?

Varric sighed and shoved the old letters into a bag. He felt old. He wasn't old, 42 was still quite youthful for a dwarf, but he certainly felt old lately. He’d gone over the documents left in various bank vaults and scooped from hiding places in the formerly haunted estate in Kirkwall. He'd put it off for years, not wanting to deal with the detritus of his brother's ruined life. Bartrand had brought it on himself, and Varric had never forgotten those doors in the deep roads slamming in his face, but somehow Varric's feelings on the matter were never quite clear. He was angry, he was mourning, and those two feelings sat like a pair of ill-tempered, underfed dogs in the pit of his heart.

He'd had to run back to Kirkwall to deal with certain Guild matters anyway, some points could not be effectively made through letters or messengers. so when a lull in the war against Corypheus gave him the opportunity, he'd informed the Inquisitor of a temporary absence and made the journey.

Walking back into that old mansion had made his skin crawl but he'd sucked it up and gone anyway, had pulled everything out as quickly as he could and shoved it into a sack to peruse back in his room in the Hanged Man. So, here was, sitting in the trappings of a past life, coughing from the dust and feeling itchy in more ways than one. Most of the old documents consisted of chaotic ledgers full of indecipherable numbers, copies of old defunct contracts, and old correspondence with the Guild and cryptic letters from Carta contacts. So far, Varric had learned a few pertinent facts. To whit, that he was the owner of a 1/3 stake in a massive Druffalo ranch somewhere in the Anderfels, for which he had received no returns for the past ten years (he’d have to sort that out… eventually), and that his brother had kept a mistress on and off for several years.

The woman signed her letters as “O. C.” Several letters had been sent over the course of about six years. The earliest ones were full of gushing affection. The later ones, full of tearful pleading. Why had Bartrand even kept them? Sentimentality? Some lingering shred of vestigial guilt? “O. C.” had given birth to a baby girl about two years into their relationship, going by the dates on the letters. Somewhere out there, Varric Tethras had a niece, if the child had survived at all. One that his asshole brother had argued for years over his responsibility for, then eventually refuted outright and walked away from, along with the child’s mother. Apparently it wasn’t only a brother that Bartrand Tethras was in the habit of betraying.

Varric threw a few more items into his bag and grabbed Bianca. He’d arranged a ride with one of the textile merchants heading toward the Frostbacks to get back to Skyhold after cleaning up some business in Kirkwall that couldn’t be dealt with at a distance. He was to meet them in Denerim, but first he had to take the ferry from Kirkwall across the bay. He hated boats, they always made him queasy.

As he walked out of the Hanged Man, something pressed at the back of his mind. The signature, “O.C.” was familiar. And the dates on the letters would make the child's age right about... Nah... Impossible. The world's not _that_ small.  
  


 

* * *

 

Varric crumpled up the parchment and tossed it into the fireplace at the side of Skyhold’s main hall. He was probably personally responsible for the decimation of a small forest at this point in his life. His latest draft of what would eventually be the story of the Inquisition (for which he could still not drum up a suitable title for) was not going well. He’d written and re-written the introductory chapter on the Inquisitor herself about twelve times.

Context. Characters need context. Who are they? What do they want? Where did they come from? Whether real or fictitious, these things matter, if you want the reader to care about a character. The problem was that he was leaving out a few key details. Dari Cadash was not the easiest person to capture on paper, he’d discovered. It was too easy to focus on the murky Carta past and paint her as some kind of simple-minded criminal, and he was too fond of her to do that to her. She was far from simple-minded, at any rate, despite the humble circumstances of her past. She’d told him in very brief summary what her childhood had been like. He wasn’t sure how much of it she would be comfortable with going down on paper, though. She tended to hide herself in shadows, a habit that was quite useful for a smuggler looking to fade into the background, but not really the makings of compelling reading.

Then there was her family history, the entirety of which even Cadash herself did not seem aware of. Her mother, apparently, had not bothered to tell her daughter much before the woman's untimely death (in circumstances uncomfortably similar to Varric's own mother). The weight of what Varric knew still crouched in the back of his mind. He should tell her. He should have told her a long time ago.

 _I didn’t even know her then_ , he told himself. _You know her better now_ , a voice in his mind replied. _She’ll be angry I waited so long. She’ll be even angrier if she finds out from someone else that I knew and didn't tell her at all._

Varric huffed and ran a hand over his aching eyes. He pulled the tie out of his hair and ran his fingers through the tangles a few times before sweeping it back and re-tying it. A few strands slipped loose again before he’d even finished and he shoved them behind his ears in annoyance. The bubbling of conversation filled the air around him and Varric leaned back in his chair to look over the room. The usual mix of residents and visitors were scattered around, although it was not as crowded as it sometimes was. The last batch of visitors from Orlais had been leaving just as he arrived back from his jaunt to Kirkwall the day before.

Cadash had mentioned an upcoming march-about through some Orlesian backwater called Emprise du Lion, and had asked him to accompany her. She’d let him sit out on their trip to the Hissing Wastes, and he'd missed their fight with the “Freemen” in the Dales while he was in Kirkwall, so he hadn’t even bothered to try and excuse himself this time. It was an opportunity to spend some time with his current subject and watch her work. Maybe he’d get some inspiration.

And who knows, maybe he'd suddenly grow a spine and talk to her. Back at Haven, the Seeker had pressed him into "making inquiries” about their newest prisoner. Ruffles had more delicately requested a bit of “background information” as well. He still had those reports in a lockbox underneath his bed - both the edited version he’d given to the Inquisition, and the original intelligence reports he’d gotten back from his personal contacts. He’d told the Seeker and Ruffles about Cadash’s years as a lowly lyrium smuggler, and that she'd been raised by a mother who had died when she was a teenager. There wasn’t much else to tell. Not much that was relevant, anyway.

Even then, even when he hadn’t known her, hadn’t known how intensely private she was, he had felt an odd impulse to protect her. At least he’d had enough sense then not to pass along that last little tidbit to Cassandra. It wasn’t really important anyway. “Oh, by the way, Cadash’s maternal grandfather was a city elf from Denerim, and her mother was treated like shit until she packed up and moved to the Free Marches where nobody knew her heritage. No wonder her mother drank herself to death, just like mine did. Yea, I didn’t know dwarves could have kids with elves, either. Who knew?” Oh sure, that would have gone down well.

Elf-blooded humans were common enough, and looked no different from other humans. They were all too tall and stretched anyway. Did it really matter if the Inquisition was headed by a one-quarter elf-blooded dwarf? One who had no damned clue why she had funny looking hands and a thin, sensitive skin?

 _She doesn’t need to know_.

Varric gathered his paper and quills up. He hadn’t bothered unpacking his bag yet, and now there was no real need to - they’d be leaving in the morning anyway. He smiled and waved at Cadash and Hero as they wandered past, headed up to the room they now appeared to share on a permanent basis.

She’s happy enough not knowing. Why bring it up now?

  
  


* * *

  
  


“A bit of a dump, innit? Too cold, brr.”

Cadash looked at the remnants of the village and was sadly inclined to agree with Sera's assessment, although the weather was only the beginning of the region's problems. Those few villagers remaining huddled around campfires or hid themselves away in those buildings that didn't have great big holes in them. They hadn't gone more than a few miles into Emprise du Lion before it was dead obvious that the place had already been completely ravaged by both the sudden bitter cold and the red templars that Harding had reported on earlier. They should have arrived sooner, but the fight in the Emerald Graves and Exalted Plains had dragged out for weeks, not to mention their little side-jaunt to the Deep Roads in between. The so-called Freemen of the Dales were routed and scattered, but it had taken too long and Samson's people had been given more than enough time to become fully entrenched here.

Thom walked slowly past and came to stand in front of a large shrine to Andraste that appeared to be the only thing in the village of Sahrnia that was wholly undamaged. Spikes of ice clung precariously to the gilded brass. A chanter stood before it, reciting. She did not seem to notice Thom nearby, or anything else.

“ _For you are the fire at the heart of the world.”_

A sharp wind blew and a spear of ice dropped from the gilded image, impaling itself in the frozen soil several inches, barely missing the Chanter, who continued her recitation without pause. Thom backed away carefully, his heavy boots crunching through the hard crust on the surface of the snow.

They headed toward the far side of the village to go investigate the quarry that Mistress Alban Poulin had spoken of. “Don't trust that woman,” Sera said, as soon as they'd made it a few yards away from the village, walking along the banks of the solidly frozen Elfsblood river. Sera's instincts aligned with Cadash's own in most matters, and she put a lot of trust in her friend's assessments and she nodded in agreement. Cadash didn't always give voice to her thoughts, too used to having no one to share them with, and it did not come naturally to her. There was a comforting feeling in having Sera there to do it for her.

Varric glanced back as they left the village. “Yea, I have to agree, she's hiding something. Did you see those notes laying on the bench? That quarry's been bleeding money for months. She had closed it long before she sold it. So why are the red templars so interested in an unprofitable quarry? And if they're just waltzing in and snatching everybody, why is she still here, untouched?“

“Tch. Nobs always lie. 'Course she's lying. Or leaving something important out, which is just as bad. Bet you a sovereign she sold those villagers up the river along with that bloody quarry o' hers. Sweeten the pot with a few little nobodies that won't be missed. Never care who suffers as long as the price is right.” Sera bent down and scooped up a handful of snow, chucking it aimlessly back toward the village behind them and making a rude gesture to follow it.

Dorian hummed to himself, thinking for a moment. “I don't think she's the only one lying, actually. Sahrnia is a village full of secrets it would seem. That Michel back there, for example. A mistake with a demon usually has rather more dramatic results. I do wonder what this Imshael actually is. I suppose we'll find out.”

Thom cleared his throat nervously and pushed ahead through the snow, creating a path for the rest of them to follow. It was calf-deep in most places, but had drifted up in spots waist-high (or shoulder-high for the dwarfier members of the party). Cadash jogged in his wake, trying to keep up with his long, impatient stride. He was still uncomfortable around talk of this sort, she knew. She couldn't say anything without making it worse, not in their present company. Sera settled in line a few steps behind Cadash while Varric and Dorian brought up the rear. They'd dressed warmly, but Cadash was already feeling the cold, despite the thick fur lining her leather armor that the quartermaster had acquired somewhere, and the fine wool scarf that Vivienne had gifted her the morning they left Skyhold.

 

-

 

“'Choice Spirit' my arse,” grumbled Cadash as she pressed Vivienne's sadly now rather tattered gift to her profusely bleeding nose. Did that demon really think she'd fall for that crap? Wealth? Sex? She already had enough of both at her disposal at the moment, and what would she do with a hundred virgins anyway? She was happy enough with Thom. They'd collected the “powerful” relics after Imshael was mopped up and she found herself rather disappointed with the paltry trinkets anyway. Maybe Dagna could make something useful out of them later.

Dorian had come through the battle unscathed, as usual. He danced out of the way of danger, probably just to make the rest of them look bad, Cadash thought. He was already wandering around the courtyard they'd fought the demon in, running his hands over the masonry. “Michel claimed this keep was Elven, I believe.”

“Course it is, it's ugly. Ugly shit's always elfy.” Sera stooped down and yanked one of her arrows out of the ground, inspecting it. “Unless it's templar-y. Or nobby. Or Coryphyshite. Or just... _ugly_.” The shaft was cracked, and she tossed it aside, shaking her head in disappointment. “Blech!” Her quiver was getting rather empty at this point, as her arrows broke against their enemies. At least the majority of them got their revenge in the process. “At this rate I'll have to kill 'em with insults!”

Cadash laughed, then winced as more blood gushed from her nose.“At least you know some barbed ones. They'll all die of shame, good plan.”

Thom leaned over and pinched the scarf more firmly around her nose, pressing as he held his other hand behind her head. She cried out but stood still. “Yea, smarts a bit, sorry about that.” He turned to where Dorian was inspecting a bit of stonework. “Little help here?” Dorian didn't seem to have heard him.

Sera threw a small stone at his back. “Oy, Dorian! Do your sparkly shit 'fore Li'l Beardy here bleeds to death, huh? What's magic even good for?”

Dorian stood up suddenly as though he'd forgotten where they were and what they were doing. “Hm? Ah, of course.” Thom still had a hold on Cadash's head but moved to the side, keeping pressure on the scarf over her nose. Dorian gave him a pointed look and Cadash was sure he'd say something tetchy, but he let go of her without comment. Dorian smirked rakishly and tilted Cadash's head back with flourishing hand movements. “Simple enough to fix, I should think.”

Blood continued to drip down Cadash's beard as Dorian's posture relaxed, his eyes going eerily blank as his concentration seemed to move inward. He could be an irrepressible showman when it came to his magic, performing for his audience, even if he was about to literally roast them, but his healing magic was always more understated, more serious. He wasn't as adept as Solas in the art, but he was more than competent and the pain and pressure in Cadash's head eased by measures as he bent the Fade around her. A few more moments, and he let go of her, stepping back and wobbling a bit on his feet. It always seemed to take more out of him than offensive magic, although he tried not to let on that it exhausted him.

“Oh good, you didn't blow her head up. Nice, that.” Sera finished counting her remaining arrows and slung the quiver back over her shoulder.

“Hm, yes, I'm quite good at not blowing up heads. Unless I intend to do it of course, then I'm a master.”

“Piss off!”

Cadash sat down on the steps, exhaustion seeping in as the adrenaline wore off. They'd need to get word back to one of the scouts and have more Inquisition people sent out to secure this Suledin Keep they'd finally evicted the red templars and their “choice spirit” from. At least they had a real foothold in the region, now. Potentially, anyway. The matter of the quarry itself still lay ahead of them, and Cadash was not looking forward to it. Thom kicked some snow aside and sat beside her while Dorian and Sera continued their bickering. Cadash let herself tip sideways until she was leaning against Thom's shoulder. It wasn't so comfortable when he was still in full plate armor, but she wasn't sure she could remain even partially upright otherwise. She decided to let Sera and Dorian entertain her for the time being, in no hurry to move again yet.

“It's a shame you think this lovely architecture is 'ugly' Sera, after all, your ancestors built it.”

“Dorian, do I look like I give a damn about bloody ancestors? Piss up a rope!”

“Eh, I've met some okay elves here and there. Did I ever tell you about Merrill?” Sera turned and looked at Varric like he had three heads.

“What? Since when do you care about elfy shit? Don't get all weird on me, Varric, I like you.”

Varric blushed slightly and shrugged, then went back to inspecting Bianca for damage. Cadash watched him for several minutes, wondering herself at the comment, and at the sudden embarrassment. It seemed... unlike him.

 

* * *

 

It took a few days for the messages to get through, and for people to get through, but Cadash wasn't entirely heartbroken at the opportunity for a bit of rest. It had been a pitched battle to even reach Imshael to begin with. If she hadn't been so insulted by his laughable “choices” she might have taken whatever he'd offered to just avoid a fight. Well, not really, but the temptation had been there, as temptation always is with such demons.

Varric was acting odd, though, Cadash thought. She caught him studying the carvings around Suledin Keep as though he were Dorian or Solas. He'd never had an interest in architecture, not like them. He was joking less, and keeping to himself. She'd caught him staring at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention more than once now. Maybe he was just as tired as she was.

Josephine sent along one Baron Edouard Desjardins to aid them in retaking the rest of Emprise du Lion. Sera hated him on principal, as she would anyone with a title like “Baron,” but Cadash found him personable enough, if a bit absent-minded.

The fully grown high dragons whirling about in the distance, however, were less charming. She hoped they'd keep out of the way until they'd dealt with the red templars, at least. Perhaps she could return some day with Bull for a bit of exercise.

 

* * *

 

Cadash could still taste the bile in the back of her throat. She'd nearly puked more than once now. It wasn't the rations disagreeing with her, but the red templars. It was one thing to have seen it in that nightmare future she'd witnessed in Redcliffe, which now felt like some horrid Fade dream in recollection, and quite another to find a whole quarry full of Samson's “experiments” locked in cages, some already contaminated and dying, the eerie red light shining from their eyes. They had no cure for them, Dorian's magic could not stem the spread of the blighted lyrium. Some begged for a merciful death, and Cadash could do no less than grant it, however much it turned her stomach.

The whole region was contaminated with red lyrium, massive spikes jutting from the ground and from cavern walls and cliff sides. They'd routed the red templars, but they'd never get it all cleaned out. Cadash was already mentally composing the letter to Empress Celene, pressing her to quarantine the region for the forseeable future. Maybe after Corypheus was dealt with (she couldn't think about the likelihood that he would not be defeated), the Inquisition could begin the long process of remediation.

Cadash kept an eye the other dwarf in the party, though, glancing back at him periodically, although he did not seem to notice her attention. Varric was muttering to himself every time they passed a large cluster, and Cadash knew he had a long, sordid history with the stuff. It was personal, for him, every spike and cluster was a slap in the face and an unspoken accusation. He hadn't meant for the stuff to ever make it out into the world at large, and she knew he blamed himself for Bianca's indiscretions.

It would be years before most of Emprise du Lion was inhabitable again, if it ever was. Not that there were many people left to inhabit it after the red templars finished their work. All with the aid of Mistress Poulin, of course. Cadash owed Sera a gold sovereign and could already hear Poulin's denials and protests. It's always some excuse – the ends justified the means, there was no choice, it was for the greater good, “blah blah blah” as Sera would no doubt say. Blah, blah, blah, indeed. Cadash thought back to the former Mayor of Crestwood before and wondered if she ought to introduce the two of them.

 

* * *

 

“Reading something interesting?”

Varric flinched and crumpled the parchment up, glancing over his shoulder at her. He hadn't heard her approach, clearly.

“Oh, just some old Guild correspondence. No, nothing terribly interesting.”

The trip back to Skyhold had been long, cold and weirdly uncomfortable. Sera and Dorian bickered as always, but Varric had withdrawn into himself, or something. He'd cracked a joke if prompted, or told them all a story if asked, but something distracted him. Guilt over the red lyrium, Cadash surmised, but she was not certain.

Thom had agreed with her that something was bothering him more than usual, as they whispered to one another in their tent one night, but he advised her to leave him alone to deal with it unless he asked for help. Cadash generally wasn't one to go meddling in other people's private affairs, but Varric was very important to her in some indefinable way and his odd turn of mood troubled her.

“Leave it be until he asks,” Thom had insisted. “You'll only make him clam up more, trust me.”

“And if I ignore him long enough, he'll open up? Thom, I'm pretty sure that doesn't work.”

“He'll come around if he wants to talk about.”

“Or he'll just never say a word until it all blows up, like that business with Bianca.”

“Give him time, love. I know he's your friend, but you can't force him. Everyone has things they'd rather deal with on their own.”

“Fine. But if he mysteriously disappears in the middle of the night, I'm sending _you_ after him.”

She'd hurt Thom with that remark, she'd felt him tense up and he'd started to roll over, pulling away from her, but she had followed him with soft kisses, reassuring him that she still loved him, despite it all. But she still felt her point had been valid. It was still something of a permanent sore spot with her that he'd never opened up to her until fate had forced his hand, despite her waiting patiently for months, careful not to press or demand. It had nearly ended in disaster for both of them.

Varric smiled at Cadash before returning to the mountain of paper that demanded his attention, but his expression had seemed forced and halfhearted to her. “Varric, if you ever need anything – _anything_ – you know you can just ask, right?”

He looked up again at her, studying her for a moment, as though weighing his options. His expression softened, just a hint of a more genuine smile breaking through his anxiety. “Yeah, I know. I'll... keep it in mind.”

She wanted to sit and spend more time with him, but her advisers were expecting a more thorough debriefing on what had transpired in Emprise du Lion, and there was also the matter of Mistress Poulin to deal with. The woman had been dropped on their doorstep by some Orlesian soldiers just days after their return. The Empress apparently expected the Inquisition to judge the woman themselves. Cadash had half a mind to just tie a ribbon around the woman's head and send her to the Winter Palace, but she could already hear Vivienne clucking at her in that understated manner she used on complete fools who did not know how The Game was played.

Cadash was tired of playing judge and jury, it was one of the more repulsive duties of her position in her mind. She'd send the woman back to Sahrnia, she thought, and let her spend her ill-gotten coin on the people she'd exploited and face them herself. Those who had survived, at least. Nobles always thought themselves more worthy of consideration than the “peasants” that they lorded over, their own inconveniences more profound than life-or-death decisions that the poor had to make. Maybe after she was truly as poor as one of those peasants, Poulin would think twice about throwing them to the wolves.

 

* * *

 

Varric leaned back in his chair, watching Cadash reluctantly heading across the hall toward the war table. He uncrumpled the old letter, smoothing it out again on the table. Carrying it around on his person was foolish, he knew, but the mystery was eating away at him. He'd asked a few trusted friends to make further inquiries into Cadash's family, and especially her dearly departed mother, Orla.

Cadash's hair was a deeper shade of red than his and Bartrand's, more like his father Andvar's had been. She didn't look much like his brother, but he could see hints of his mother in her face, especially around the eyes. O.C. - Orla Cadash? He prayed to Andraste that it wasn't true. It's not that he found the notion of her being a relation of his unpalatable – he'd come to care for her in his own way, and she was quite fond of him, as unlikely as that seemed. If she turned out to be his niece, was it really so bad?

A vice-like pressure settled in his chest as he read the letter again, a semi-coherent rambling plea written in a shaking hand no doubt impaired by alcohol for Bartrand to return to “O.C.” and help raise their daughter. _She's growing so fast, she needs clothes, I can't take care of her alone, she's always hungry. Winter's come and she's cold. They won't give me another job until next month, the boss is pissed off over that shipment I lost last week. I miss you, I love you..._

Hungry, cold and ill-clothed. That any child born of House Tethras, legitimate or not, should grow up in such a state was a stain on the family. That was the real problem. He hadn't known. He couldn't have known. No, this was all on Bartrand and his perennial selfish cruelty. Always happy to use people, big brother Bartrand, until they got in the way, until they were inconvenient. Brothers, lovers, daughters, it made no difference, it seemed.

What would Cadash say if she knew? Would she blame him? Would she want to go after Bartrand? Not that there was much left of his brother at this point. The Chantry sisters had advised him to start thinking about making arrangements. Bartrand had begun loosing weight recently, his appetite was unreliable, they said. Varric thought of Bartrand as he'd seen him during his visit to Kirkwall - face hollow and gaunt, his eyes dull and watery. His mind had failed years ago, and now his body was following.

Whatever Varric's conflicted feelings about his errant brother, he would soon the sole head of House Tethras. He had no children of his own, of course. He'd clung to his on-again, off-again relationship with Bianca with no real hope of any resolution for years. Part of him knew she was just a convenient excuse for him to avoid real commitment. He hadn't exactly ended it with her, not definitively, but he'd felt a door shutting somewhere at their last parting. He'd hear from her again, he knew, the next time she shit the bed and wanted help cleaning up, and he knew he'd help her. But there was no future there, not for them together. Maybe he just wasn't built for cozy family life. His brother sure as shit hadn't been.

Once Bartrand died, he'd have to name a heir himself. He had cousins, of course. Thorold had the most business sense, but he also possessed a rather twisted little brain and his temperament was too much like Bartrand's for Varric's taste. Vidar had always been a real sweetheart, but he had the brains of a nug when it came to making a deal, he was too trusting.

His friends were in the Free Marches sniffing about and making inquiries by now, and Varric would know for sure soon enough. Orla Cadash had never been a key player in the Carta, but she hadn't been dead for so long that there could be nobody left who had known her, known who she'd spent her time with, who she'd been seen with. He couldn't change the past, but he could at least do right by his niece in the future, if it turned out to be true. The Inquisition wouldn't last forever. He could have one of the family's lawyers back in Kirkwall draw up the paperwork, it wasn't really that complicated, after all.

 

* * *

 

“Ah, Inquisitor, do you have a moment?”

Cadash reluctantly stopped to acknowledge Josephine, who had just come through the door from her office. Thom greeted their ambassador with a nod but did not step aside. Cadash gripped his hand more tightly. They'd been back at Skyhold less than a week after their campaign to free Emprise du Lion. She knew Corypheus was still licking his wounds after his failures at Adamant and with his thwarted attempt to wrest control of Orlais, but they did not have forever. Still, she'd hoped for at least a couple of weeks where something was not on fire...

“Of course, Josephine. What can I do for you?”

Josephine smiled somewhat apologetically, handing a letter to Cadash and explaining. “A professor at the University of Orlais has a request. I thought, with situation with Corypheus at a slight, ah... standstill, for the moment, we could look into this matter?”

Cadash glanced up to acknowledge her question and continued reading the letter. Clearly this Bram Kenric and Josephine had been exchanging letters for some time. After she finished, she handed the letter back. “Do you know the nature of his discoveries? He says it might benefit the Inquisition but there's nothing in here to indicate what, exactly, that benefit would be.”

Josephine bounced slightly on the her feet, her excitement over whatever this was obvious. “Well, it's difficult to explain in such a short letter, it would be easier if you spoke to him yourself, of course. He and his assistant have been in the Frostback Basin for several weeks now. I know we've discussed the original Inquisition in the past, and the history... well, there's no need for me to repeat myself. He believes he has found evidence of the first Inquisition's activities in the region, for which there is no official record. There are rumors, of course, stemming from that era. This could re-write several history books if his suspicions prove correct. It is not a far journey from Skyhold. I would appreciate it if you could look into this. As a, ah, personal favor, if it is not too much of an imposition?”

Cadash sighed, looking up at Josephine's childlike grin and clear enthusiasm. She knew Josephine had a fondness for the study of history, especially of Orlais. How could she refuse?

 

* * *

 

Dangerous. That's how Scout Harding described the place. Wild animals, difficult terrain, Avvar tribes who varied from reserved to outright hostile.

Cadash greeted this Professor Kenric, who was younger than she'd expected. His own enthusiasm at least matched Josephine's, if not eclipsed it.

“After 800 years, we may be able to determine the final resting place of the last Inquisitor!”

Cadash wracked her memory for a moment, trying to remember what she'd read in one of the prodigious stack of books that Josephine had lent her when she'd first been declared Inquisitor. “Ameridan, wasn't it? He hunted dragons, demons. Wasn't he lost on his final expedition? Nobody knows how he died, or where, only that he was hunting a dragon at the time.”

Artifacts, scattered here and there. The Jaws of Hakkon, or whatever they called themselves. Cadash had to admit there was at least potential for this investigation to yield something materially useful to the Inquisition – there was a lot of mystery surrounding Ameridan's life and death, and she had learned to distrust the “official” histories of the Chantry which, like Orzammar's Shaperate, had the annoying tendency to alter or erase any politically inconvenient or uncomfortable facts.

Cadash had recently managed to get hold of a full copy of the excised account of Andraste's dealings with the Dalish, the Canticle of Shartan, but it had taken some digging. She was sure the request turned a few heads, and probably prompted a good deal of grumbling and tutting, but she was determined to learn at least something of this religion she'd been drawn into as a “Herald” and thus far, in as much as she'd found Andraste to be a compelling figure, the doings and dealings of Chantry itself had not impressed her. They were too much like Orzammar for comfort – smug and content in their supposed superiority, and too quick to cozy up to worldly powers and trod on the backs of the powerless and poor. Elves were relegated to the margins at best, and dwarves, of course, were relegated to the dustbin, utterly unworthy of their consideration.

What secrets of this Ameridan had the Chantry destroyed?

 

* * *

 

Sera stood off to the side, grumbling to herself. Andraste and an Elven god, side by side. The truth about Ameridan was revealed to them in bits and pieces, like looking in a shattered mirror, but slowly a picture was resolving itself.

The Hakkonites made themselves a nuisance, but the aid of the Stone-Bear Hold's people and Thane were swiftly pushing them back. They were a distraction, Cadash thought, irrelevant in the bigger picture. The region was full of Tevinter ruins, overgrown and nearly reclaimed by the forest, but some of their artifacts were still functioning. They'd retrieved a few useful trinkets, nothing that would justify the weeks they'd already spent here, and she hoped they'd uncover something, eventually, that would let her return to Skyhold looking like something other than a fool on a fool's errand.

Of all people, it was Varric who was gently prodding at Sera to pay more attention to Ameridan's slowly emerging history. Why was he suddenly so defensive about Sera's distaste for elven culture?

“C'mon Buttercup, this stuff is interesting! It's a story, you love stories!”

“Yea, good ones about pirates and shit. Not elfy shit. You're really starting to crawl up my nose lately, Varric, you know that? And I thought you were one of the good ones, too.”

Cadash stepped in between the two archers. “Let's just drop this for now, okay? We can talk about history when we've dug it all up. We still don't know what happened to Ameridan, or why. Obviously the Chantry forgot a lot. Or covered it all up, either way. But we're here to find out. We can hash over the merits of it all later.”

This place was full of ghosts, that was for sure. Figuratively and literally – they'd already encountered one spirit who had told them of Ameridan's lover, an elven mage named Talana, forgotten or erased from history as so much else. Cadash's annoyance with the hypocrisy of the Chantry was growing by the minute. She shouldn't take it so personally – she still had not decided whether the Maker was even real or not. But there were those who insisted upon calling her the Herald of Andraste, so she might as well shout from the rooftops, she figured.

And shout she would. She'd borrowed some parchment and quills off of Varric and had begun keeping her own notes. She was no academic and her education had been informal – she'd been taught enough reading, writing and numbers to receive written orders from her handlers in the Carta, to keep track of the amount of lyrium under her hand, and to know a good price when she was offered one. But she had no idea what Kenric would want to know the most about, so she wrote everything down she could think of, however small or irrelevant it seemed. She'd done as much in the Deep Roads, and had all but shoved it in the face of the King of Orzammar himself. She wasn't sure if the “real” dwarves were doing anything with the knowledge she'd gifted to them, indeed, she doubted that Bhelen had done anything but throw the letter into the fire. She hadn't been a firsthand witness to what the Merchant's Guild had made of their copy of the letter, but Varric had assured her that she'd set the cat among the pigeons with the suggestion that lyrium was a living substance.

That was small potatoes compared to what their discoveries about Ameridan could do to the southern Chantry. They still did not have a Divine and at the moment, the organization was highly disordered and too busy with in-fighting to pay much attention to the world outside of their own walls. An opportune time to shake the skeletons out of the closets of Thedas, and if they were going to force the mantle of “Herald” on her, well, as the saying goes, if the shoe fits...

 

* * *

 

They were laid out on animal skins in a small hut in Stone-Bear hold, gathering their strength for the last task of this journey. The Jaws of Hakkon were broken and the Avvar who had taken that name upon themselves were scattered into hiding or dead. There was still the matter of the revived dragon, which had taken up residence to the south, threatening the entire region.

Cadash lay in the dim firelight, staring at the ceiling as Thom snored softly beside her. She was exhausted, but she couldn't sleep. The mournful face of Ameridan kept returning to her mind. He'd lived and died with honor and she should not feel pity for him, she knew. He'd been dead for centuries, really, his last gasp held in pause only until help could arrive. She owed it to him to complete his work and deal with the beast that had escaped.

On the other side of the fire, Sera sat up. “Psst, you awake, Li'l Beardy?”

“Yeah. Can't sleep.”

“Me neither. This hut smells funny. Or maybe that's just Dorian. Either way...”

“I keep thinking about Ameridan, everything he believed, everything he fought for.”

“What? Why are you wasting time on that? We'll kill that dragon, we're good at shit like that.”

“I meant with Drakon and everything. Ameridan thought things were going well. Then Drakon's son destroyed the Dales, scattered everyone. Ameridan never knew. Not until we woke him up and told him. Maybe we shouldn't have.”

“Pfft, not that again. You're getting as bad as Varric. Why do you even care? It's ancient history. Ancient _elfy_ history. You're not an elf. Lucky you.”

“You think being a dwarf is better?”

The fire crackled between them and Varric snorted as he turned in his sleep, as undisturbed as Thom by everything they'd encountered so far. Dorian was laying stretched out on his back, he and his long legs taking up a side of the hut on their own, his hands folded over his chest. Dorian, of course, never snored. Cadash occasionally suspected him of using magic to ensure it.

“Well, it sure ain't worse. Least up here nobody cares about ancient dwarfy history and shit. You don't _have_ to care about it.”

Cadash bit her tongue, refusing to lash out because she didn't have the energy to argue. She thought Sera's comment was a bit rich after everything they went through in the Deep Roads. Just because “ancient history” was underneath your feet doesn't mean it was gone, or that it couldn't trip you up. She rolled over against Thom's shoulder, trying to quiet her mind. She heard Sera shifting on the other side of the fire.

“Look, Cadash, I didn't mean that, okay? I get it. We all have shit. I mean, Widdle explained some of it the other day, I don't claim to understand it all, but yea, we've both been handed a lot of crap we don't want. Doesn't mean we have to accept it.”

Cadash sighed and pulled at the ends of her beard anxiously. “History might be stupid but people use it as an excuse to be shitty _today_. They re-write it and fake it so they can be shitty right now. That's why it matters. I got a copy of that Canticle of Shartan the other day, you know? They cut it out because the Orlesians decided they hate elves during the Exalted March. Couldn't have something just laying about that makes them look good, right?”

“Ugh, _I get it_. I just don't care. Yea, people shouldn't do stuff like that, it's nasty. But if it wasn't that, they'd just find some other excuse to stomp all over little people. You think they wouldn't? They don't even need an excuse, they just like having one, but they do it either way. Anyway, can we just drop it?”

“You're probably right, but it still bothers me, that's all. The Chantry's as bad as the bloody Shaperate. They're all nug shit.” Cadash glanced back over her shoulder. “Wait... Widdle? Who's Widdle?”

“Widdle!” Sera laughed at what apparently was a grand joke of some sort. “Oh, right. Dagna, I mean.”

“Dagna... Widdle? _Widdle?_ ”

“What? I like it. She doesn't mind, she said it's cute.”

Cadash blinked a few times, resettling on her back. “Well I guess if she doesn't mind it... you and Dagna, though? I hadn't thought of-”

“What, you think there's something wrong with that? Piss off!”

“What? No! I didn't say that. I just... I thought you went for a different type, is all. What was it you said about Qunari women earlier, 'woof''...?”

Sera laughed sharply and Thom grumbled in his sleep beside her, but did not rouse. Cadash envied him, he could sleep through nearly anything.

“Well it ain't like I _planned_ it. It just sorta happened. So I like her, so what? I need to find her something on this trip. Something... good. Shiny!”

Cadash smiled, glad that her friend had found someone, even if it seemed a strange match to her. She was fond of Dagna as well. It made sense, in a way, both of them were free souls who had no time to waste on the opinions of the boring and backward-looking. “We'll come across something sooner or later I'm sure. If we get that dragon down without being turned into jelly, you can take her some bits to experiment with if you want. She likes making stuff out of things like that.”

“Ohhh... good idea. Dragony bits. Yeah, she'd like that.”

Sera trailed off and fell silent, comforted, for the moment, by the thought of something impressive to take back to her crush. Cadash hoped it worked out for her friends. She rolled over and wrapped herself around Thom again. He wrapped an arm around her without waking and curled around her, rumbling like a hibernating bear.

 

* * *

 

Battered, bruised and mildly concussed, Cadash swayed slightly on the back of the nuggalope she and Thom were riding. They'd been patched up by Dorian a bit, but Cadash planned on seeking out the dedicated healers among the Inquisition's mages as soon as they got home. The dragon's skull was wrapped in a piece of sack cloth and lashed to their steed with rope behind Thom, and the flies it was attracting buzzed annoyingly around them. They'd collected some of the dragon's blood into jars and as much of the hide as they could pack. Cadash had collected the claws and some impressively large gallstones and wrapped them up separately for Sera to make a present of for Dagna.

Dorian and Sera rode side by side on a pair of the Inquisition's horses, trading insults in a game of the dozens. Their laughter was a comfort to Cadash – they might not exactly be best friends, but they'd reached an accord somehow, much as Dorian had with Thom. She knew it was childish to let her mood be so greatly affected by the people around her, even when they were not involving her, but she always felt wound up when everyone around her was angry and arguing and couldn't stop herself. She'd never liked shouting, not since she was a small child and those rare times her father had been present and had spent the time shouting back and forth with her mother.

Varric brought up the rear on a somewhat ornery Dracolisk. He'd disliked the mount, but it was what the scouts could spare for their journey back to Skyhold. The horse he'd arrived on had been one of the casualties of the Jaws of Hakkon. His mood was still odd and quiet.

They'd arrive at Skyhold by sundown, at least, and maybe she'd have a moment to rest.

 

* * *

 

Varric watched the backs of his companions as they rode ahead of him. He was going to tell her, at Skyhold. He owed her the truth. Not just about her grandfather, but about her father. She might be angry, she might never forgive him. She might throw him out and tell him to never return. Hell, she might throw the Seeker at him. She'd forgiven Thom for his secrecy, though, hadn't she? But that's not the same, he thought. Varric may be a friend, he was probably even family, but that's different from a lover. She wasn't the sort of person to whom trust came easily, and she didn't like it when people kept her in the dark, he knew that much.

He'd have more definitive answers waiting for him when they returned. They'd been in the Basin for over three weeks and his inquiries should have answers by now.

“You're a coward,” he told himself, “but it's gotta be done. Just get on with it.”

 

* * *

 

Cadash decided there were few things in the universe superior to glorious, hot water. She was largely uncomfortable with the luxuries offered to her as the Inquisitor, she refused all manner of extravagances, had most of the lavish gifts sent by nobles looking to curry favor resold to fund better pay for Skyhold's servants and soldiers, and generally didn't know what the bloody hell to do with wealth. It was one of the things that Vivienne was forever shaking her head at in permanent disapprobation. “You've earned a bit of pampering, dear, just enjoy it!”

Well, this morning, she was taking the Enchanter's advice for once. The large tub had been dragged before her fireplace and filled with steaming hot water and she intended to remain in it until it was too cold to stay. The bruises and the ache in overworked muscles faded in the hot water and she could feel weeks' worth of tension in her neck and back finally loosening.

Thom had joined her and after they'd both finished scrubbing the Frostback Basin away, they'd taken to lounging at the edge of dozing in the water. Well, she was at the edge of dozing, Thom was beginning to snore outright. She kept an eye cracked open in case he began sinking, not wanting him to actually drown, although it was unlikely. She poked him with a toe when he began slouching to one side and he flinched as he startled awake. “We should probably get out of here before we dissolve altogether. Also, the water's getting tepid.”

Cadash hoisted herself up over the side and sloshed water as she dropped to the floor, soaking the expensive carpet next to the bed and not really caring as she squeezed the water out of her hair with a thick towel. She wrapped it around her hair like a turban and left it, glancing back at Thom, who had not yet moved. The light of the fireplace reflected in his eyes, giving him a slightly feral look as he stared at her openly with a somewhat dopey smile.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, love. Just happy we made it back in one piece.”

She pulled the towel from her damp hair and threw it at his face. He caught it deftly in one hand and stood, and Cadash stared in return as the water cascaded down his body. She'd not yet grown tired of the sight, however much he insisted he was nothing special to look at. Perhaps he wasn't, but neither was she. She was pleased anyway.

It had been an exhausting trip in the Basin, but he was right – they'd come back alive, with a host of new revelations to upset the powerful and complacent, and they'd yet to hear anything new from Corypheus's corner. The threat was not gone, only biding it's time, but Cadash was happy to take advantage of the pause.

“Well then, why don't we celebrate a bit?”

She grabbed his wrist as he stepped out of the bath and dragged him toward the bed, heedless of the growing trail of water on the floor. She could pay the chambermaids a nice fat bonus for their trouble later.

 

* * *

 

Varric went through the papers again, all of them, the old letters, the recent reports from his Carta contacts, the legal documents he'd had drawn up by a lawyer he trusted to keep details to himself. He poured over them line-by-line, looking for discrepancies or errors. He'd slept only a few hours just before dawn, and had banked on Cadash and her paramour having a long lay-in as they usually did the day after returning from an exhausting campaign. He'd had nothing to eat the evening before and had made his breakfast from black coffee as his stomach knotted itself up.

He had his answers, or as close as one could get nearly three decades after the fact. His brother had, indeed, been seen in the company of Orla Cadash quite frequently over the span of about seven years, according those Carta smugglers who were old enough to remember her, beginning not long after Bartrand had taken over the affairs of the family after their father's death. The Inquisitor would have been born around the time of Varric's twelfth birthday, right when his mother Ilsa's drinking habit had begun growing serious.

Orla Cadash and Bartrand Tethras had met in Kirkwall, at some point, during a brief span when the woman had lived in a tucked-away corner somewhere in dark town. The woman had later moved to a smaller village outside of the city at some point, a few miles east up the coastline, after a bad injury when moving a bit of “merchandise." The sort of jobs she began taking after that point were less lucrative, but far safer, and living in the countryside was cheaper.

Bartrand had been periodically running back and forth to Ostwick for several years, as they had a few cousins in that area who needed close oversight lest they start skimming a bit of cream off the top of the family business. Apparently the room Orla Cadash rented was a regular stop-over for him on that particular journey. Or had been, until his daughter was about four years old and he cut ties with the child and her mother permanently. Varric vaguely remembered an iron casting business in Ostwick that his brother had offloaded at some point for an unusually low price.

He hadn't known why his brother was so keen to remove Ostwick altogether from their holdings at the time, he hadn't cared enough to even ask. After all, that was his brother's job – to find good contracts and to keep the money flowing. Varric had been occupied cultivating his own contacts, both official and unofficial, and spent the rest of his time drinking, writing and enjoying his youth. There was also the mess with Bianca, but the less he thought about that, the better.

Varric piled the papers up, re-ordered them for the umpteenth time and put the pack back into a leather bag. The trick would be catching Cadash alone, as she was constantly surrounded when she was at Skyhold (much to her annoyance), and Hero rarely left her side these days unless he was busy with the soldiers or her advisers managed to drag her off to that war table.

He'd probably not be able to avoid Hero, but he might be able to get a bit of her time without the crowd if he could screw up his courage and go directly to her. The main hall of Skyhold was still subdued, only a few residents and servants milling about. It was approaching mid-morning and he'd have to move quickly.

 

* * *

 

Cadash and Thom laid together on the rumpled bedclothes enjoying one another's company. Their morning had been thoroughly pleasant, Cadash thought, after the bath. And after what was after the bath. They could probably use _another_ bath, but reality would intrude soon, she knew, and the water was cold now anyway. When was the last time she'd been able to waste a whole morning? Months ago, she was certain. Thom was humming to himself and running his fingers over her skin in meaningless patterns. She couldn't remember the last time he had seemed so content, either.

If only every morning could be like this, she thought. Why does the world constantly have to get in the way? She could be quite selfish, and she wanted Thom to herself, she wanted time to herself.

Someone knocked at the door and Cadash rolled her eyes. Thom chuckled and ran a finger from the base of her scalp all the way down her spine. “You think we should see who that is?”

“Must we? Maybe they'll go away and come back later.”

No such luck, as the knocking repeated itself, more loudly this time. Cadash groaned and rolled off the bed, grabbing clothes as she went. “Yeah, yea, keep your hair on, I'm coming.”

She threw the door open with more force than was strictly necessary, expecting to see a messenger from Josephine or Leliana, or perhaps a servant sent to check if she'd drowned in the tub. On the other side of the door, however, was Varric, his back turned as though he were just leaving.

“Oh. Varric.”

He hesitated a moment, then turned in the manner of a warship, by slow measures, his gaze coming to rest just slightly off the side of meeting hers, and gripping a leather satchel tightly. “Er, yeah, just wondering if you had a moment, Inquisitor. I, ah, had something I thought you ought to see. But if you're busy, I can come back later.”

He laughed nervously and Cadash raised an eyebrow at his visible nervousness, but waved him through. She shouted up the steps at Thom. “Oy, are you dressed yet? We have company.”

Thom's reply floated down in the negative, so she held a hand up to stall Varric, giving Thom a moment to put something on while Varric stood fidgeting like an anxious cat.

 

* * *

 

Thom stood propped against the fireplace mantle in a linen shirt and trousers he'd pulled on at the last moment, his feet still bare. He was peering blankly at the fire in an apparent bid to become a piece of furniture. Meanwhile, Cadash sat at her desk slowly reading through the stack of documents Varric had handed her a moment ago before collapsing in a side chair like a beached shipwreck.

“You'd better just read, I can explain further, but it will be clearer if you just go through it first.”

She'd recognize her mother's handwriting anywhere, particularly that dazed-chicken scrawl that the woman had produced when too far into her cups. She'd not given much thought to Orla Cadash since her mother had died when she was twelve. It was just too painful to think about most of the time.

And she'd given absolutely no thought at all to the father she remembered only in vague images and raised voices. She hadn't even known the man's name. Her mother had refused flatly to speak of him, had referred to him only as “That Bastard” until the day she died.

“Varric... isn't this Bartrand your brother?”

Varric was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, his nose pointed down at his feet. He didn't look up, but he nodded his head in the positive, seemingly unable to speak. Cadash glanced at Thom, who had perked up at her question and was now looking at her, and at Varric, his expression bordering dangerously close to something like pity. Whether for her or for Varric, or both of them, Cadash was unsure, but that was neither here nor there at the moment.

“That would make you my uncle, then, I take it?”

Varric forced himself to sit upright and gave her a crooked smile. “Yeah, it would. It doesn't have to mean anything... unless you want it to? I'm not a fool, I know I wasn't there when you needed--”

Cadash held up a hand, stopping him. “You've been nothing but helpful to me since we met, Varric. It's not your fault that your brother hid this. How long have you known about this, though?”

Varric coughed noisily, clearing his throat. “Since that trip back to Kirkwall. I went by his old estate, cleaned out a few things. He's... ah... I know I told you about the red lyrium idol, he's been out of his mind for over a decade, doesn't even know where he is half the time. I mean, if you want to see him, I won't stop you, but there's not much point. The Chantry sisters looking after him don't think he'll last much longer.”

Cadash read over the report from Varric's Carta contact again, recognizing the names of a few of her mother's old friends and acquaintances. She hadn't seen any of them in years, most she'd not heard from again except in passing mention after her mother's death. None of them had lifted a finger to help, that was for damned sure. She'd spent several weeks on the streets before she had remembered a cousin of her mother's living in Ostwick that her mother had spoken fondly of childhood memories of, who might take her in.

In hindsight, her cousin had been a poor choice, but she hadn't had many options at the time. Carta work or prostitution, or hard labor in a quarry or mine somewhere perhaps. Dwarves were not hired as household servants typically, the wealthy families in the Free Marches hired elven servants, or human if none were available. She ended up Carta anyhow, at her cousin's behest. She still remembered the fear and pain of being held down by his Carta compatriots as one of them tattooed her face so she could be ferried in and out of Dust Town in Orzammar.

Would Varric have taken her in, if he'd known about her? She didn't even have to ask if Bartrand would have, she would have received a resounding “no” without hesitation, that was something she knew in her bones. The man had never cared about her at all. Why would she want to see him?

“No, there's no need for that. I don't remember him well and I doubt he'd remember me at all.”

Varric shifted in his seat and took a few deep breaths, collecting his thoughts. “No, you're right. He probably wouldn't recognize you. I don't know why I even suggested it.” He lifted the leather satchel from the floor and pulled another sheaf of papers out, handing them to her. “I had one of the family lawyers draw this up. You're of age, so I'll need your signature to make it official. I don't have any children of my own and it doesn't seem likely at this point so...”

Cadash took the papers and scanned over them. It was a lot of dense verbiage in that nearly incomprehensible semi-language lawyers loved to use and she squinted at it in annoyance. “Varric, is this... if it's what I think it is, you can't be serious? You must have had someone in mind already before all of this, I can't in good conscience just step in and...”

Thom stood up and walked over while she was talking, peering over Cadash's shoulder at the documents Varric had given to her. She leaned back and allowed him to pick them up and Varric did not protest. It didn't really involve him, but Thom was so intertwined with her life at this point, it hardly mattered, she thought. He might as well see it himself.

“Looks pretty serious to me, love. He wants to leave you the whole kit and caboodle eventually, from the look of it. But it's up to you to sign it or not.”

Varric laughed again, although Cadash didn't quite see the humor in the situation. How long had Varric known her? It had been a little over a year since she fell out of the fade and met him on that first journey up the side of the mountain to the hole in the sky. She'd sought him out countless times in the last year, finding him to be a trustworthy friend, despite Cassandra's early insistence that he was “a snake” and a liar. He'd never lied to her when it actually mattered, and his advice was usually worthwhile. Much like... an uncle's ought to be, when she thought of it.

Cadash took the papers back from Thom and laid them on the desk, leaning back and trying to wrap her head around it all. It was too much for one morning. And it had started so wonderfully. She wasn't angry with Varric, exactly, but she resented this knowledge he'd dropped in her lap and was taken aback by what he was suddenly offering. It was just too much!

“I don't know anything about running the sort of business your family is engaged in, Varric. You know that, right? I've never had a spy network, I've never bought and sold entire businesses. I barely cope with the Inquisition and I've only managed so far because I'm surrounded by people who are far more intelligent and experienced than I am.”

Varric frowned at her and stood up, rubbing at the back of his neck and glancing around the massive bedroom she shared with Thom. “Really? How do you think _I_ manage? I have 'people' too. That's all any of us can do! I'm not a mage, I can't just magic up miraculous solutions. You find competent people and you delegate. Which is exactly what you're doing here. The business of House Tethras is a lot messier than the Inquisition, I'll grant you that, but we're also not a paramilitary organization trying to take down a darkspawn magister with delusions of world dominance. We make a tidy profit, but we're not saving the world. You put too much pressure on yourself.”

Thom had returned to his spot by the fireplace and Cadash looked over at him for some kind of support, but he merely cocked his head in Varric's direction as if to indicate that she ought to mind his words. Cadash rubbed at her eyes and sighed, feeling outnumbered. It was nearly lunchtime but it was still too damned early for life-changing decisions as far as she was concerned.

“Can you give me some time to think it over, at least? I mean does this need to be sent back immediately or can it wait?”

Varric smiled at her softly and shrugged. “No, there's no rush. Bart the Bastard isn't dead yet, and while I can't predict the future, I don't plan on kicking the bucket in the immediate future if I can help it. I mean, if we lose this war it won't matter anyway.”

Varric walked over to her desk and picked up the papers, shoving them back in the leather satchel. He stopped halfway across the room though, and came back to her side as she was standing up. “You know what, I'll leave this with you. They're all yours, not mine. For what it's worth, I am sorry my worthless brother abandoned you. I know how that feels and you and your mother deserved better than that.”

He set the bag down on her desk and turned to look at her face, as though studying her, for several heartbeats. A collection of emotions flitted across his features, but it happened so quickly Cadash was unsure what he was thinking. He reached out and took her hand in both of his, suddenly, lifting it and running his thumb over her fingers, studying them as well.

“Varric, what is it?” The morning had been full of revelations, but he was still holding something back, she could almost feel it fighting its way out of him as they stood there.

“I have a.. confession, Inquisitor. It'll probably piss you off and if you want to hit me later, I won't complain.”

She heard Thom shifting where he stood, no doubt weighing the decision of whether to stay or beat a hasty retreat, but in the end, he remained. She glanced over at him and saw him picking at his nails with a slight blush on his face. It wasn't lost on her that they'd both seen this particular drama before, although at least this time there weren't prison bars involved.

“Back in Haven, right after the explosion, when you fell out of the Breach, Cassandra, Josephine, and Leliana had me make some inquiries. They wanted to know about your past, where you came from, what kind of family you belong to, sort of thing.”

Cadash laughed, wondering why he thought this was some grand secret. “I already figured that out, Varric, Josephine mentioned they'd looked into my Carta work and she'd had a few questions about exactly what I'd been doing. I know you have Carta contacts so I sort of figured you might have used them.”

Varric shook his head, still gripping her hand softly but firmly. “That's not what I'm saying. I found out quite a lot but I gave them an edited version, kept back a few things I figured were none of their damned business.”

Varric moved his grip from her fingers to her wrist and shifted his hand until it was against hers, palm to palm. His hands were much broader than hers, his fingers shorter but sturdier and ink-stained. “You don't have a dwarf's hands, Dari, and I suspect your mother didn't either. Did she ever tell you about her father? Your grandfather?”

Cadash stared at their hands where they were pressed together, the warmth of his seeping into her own perpetually cold one. “She didn't talk about her family. She left home when she was pretty young I think. I'm not even sure where she grew up.”

Varric intertwined his fingers with her, squeezing briefly before letting her go entirely and stepping back. “She was born in Denerim. Her mother was a Cadash, not her father. Her father wasn't even a dwarf, he was an elf from the alienage there. Your grandparents both died during the Blight, but your mother had left Ferelden before that. Probably wanted to get away somewhere people wouldn't know about her mixed blood, you know how dwarves are, even here on the surface there are some of us who think our own shit doesn't stink like everyone else's. People like my asshole brother. It doesn't really matter, but I figured you should know about it.”

Cadash sat down again at her desk. “You figured I should know about it, but waited a year to tell me, Varric? Maker's breath...” She knew it was a pointless thing to get annoyed about, but her good mood of the morning was shot to hell anyway and he was a convenient target.

Varric sniffled a bit and turned toward the balcony, looking out at the mountains and the sky beyond it. “Yea, I've always been a bit of a coward, what can I say? I told you if you want to hit me, I won't complain. You wouldn't be the first.”

Cadash squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at them, thinking now that her best bet would be to go straight back to bed and hope there were no more interesting little details about her family waiting to surprise her.

“She's part elf, then? So that's what you meant earlier, back in the Herald's Rest when you said it wasn't surprising that--”

Varric turned red and interrupted Thom's sudden comment. “Yes, that's what I meant. Elf blood doesn't show up at all in humans, but apparently it leaves a few small details in dwarves. It's not anything dramatic, is it? It's not like she's walking around with pointed ears, is it?”

“You couldn't tell me this, but you were talking about it with Thom?” Cadash turned on her lover as well, “And why didn't _you_ mention anything earlier?”

“He made one incomplete, off-hand comment when we were talking about dwarves in general and I asked why shaving gave you so much bother, if it was like that for everyone else. And when I asked what he meant, he swanned off and left me to pay the tab! What the bloody hell was I supposed to think?”

Cadash huffed and stood, making her way over to a cupboard where Thom kept a personal supply of spirits for when they didn't feel like the crowd in the pub. She'd gotten hold of a very nice whiskey a few months ago for the both of them to share and poured herself a shot. It wasn't even lunchtime but she felt like she'd earned the privilege.

Varric had turned a rather lovely shade of red but as soon as he saw the glass in her hand his expression darkened. “There are at least two women in our family that have gone down a bad road with that stuff, I hope you're not making a habit of-”

Cadash down the shot in one gulp and gave him a glare that could curdle milk. “Yes, I'm well aware of my mother's downfall, and no it is not a habit. But I've got quite the headache at the moment, if it's all the same to you. I think I'll go see what they're cooking up for lunch in the kitchens, if that's _allowed_ , dear Uncle.”

She stooped and grabbed a pair of shoes as she swept out of the room, not bothering to put them on until she'd slammed the door and made it through the main hall, garnering looks from some of the people milling about. She'd gone from feeling sorry for him to being thoroughly annoyed. She'd started toward the kitchens but changed her mind at the last second and headed out the door toward the Herald's Rest. She wasn't in the mood for more booze, but she needed to clear her head. She knew she was overreacting to Varric's long omission, and her annoyance had spilled over onto Thom although Thom had not really done anything wrong.

 

* * *

 

“Well, shit. That could have gone better.” Varric shot Thom a long-suffering look and headed toward the staircase leading back down to the main hall of Skyhold, feeling like a bit like a kicked dog, although he knew he mostly deserved it. Why could nothing ever go smoothly?

Thom leaned over the rail as he reached the door. “Just give her some time, she'll cool off. Eventually. Although one bit of advice - I'd cut the paternalistic crap, she's not actually a child.” Thom's shaggy head disappeared and Varric gave one last lingering stare at the empty air it left behind before heading back to his table in the corner. He had some letters to write to the Guild that he'd been putting off and they seemed almost friendly now.

 

* * *

 

“It's not a druffalo, it's a nug. Look at the ears.”

“More like a rabbit now, actually. Not my fault it moved.”

Cadash reached over and grabbed another cookie from the jar sitting between her head & Sera's as they laid on the roof of the Herald's Rest. She still couldn't bake worth a damn, really, but at least she'd used chocolate this time instead of raisins. “us cookies" she still called them. The cookies were mediocre but they meant more to Cadash than she'd probably ever let on. She'd never really had friends before.

“So how'd it go with Dagna? Did you give her the dragon bits?”

Sera giggled and stomped her feet against the shingles. “Ooh, I haven't told you yet, have I?”

Cadash sat up and tossed the last piece of her cookie at a passing soldier below, grinning when it bounced off his helmet. He looked up, but not at them, as though expecting to see a passing bird. “Told me what?”

“Widdle kissed me this morning when I gave her the stuff. I think she likes me. _Likes_ me likes me.”

“Well, kissing's usually a good sign, yeah?”

Sera sat up and wrapped her long arms around her knees. “Well it was just a peck on the cheek, all friendly like, but I kinda got the feeling she mighta been thinking about a slightly different aim.”

“Next time, maybe. Or, you know, you could just tell her you want a date? Take her someplace nice. I mean I know it's Skyhold, but there's this field up in the hills just to the East, Thom's taken me there a few times. Tons of wildflowers all year long, it's nice. I'll draw you a map later.”

Sera flopped back down on the shingles and stared back up at the sky. “Hm, there's an idea. She likes flowers, I think. Pink ones. Are there pink ones?”

Cadash tried to think back to the last time she'd been there with Thom. It had been weeks ago, before the Deep Roads, and her memory was fuzzy. “Maybe. Can't remember.”

“Weren't there for the flowers, eh?” Sera laughed lasciviously. “Bit _distracted_ at the time, were you?”

Cadash rolled over and rested her chin on her forearms, closing her eyes. “I guess.”

“You _guess_? What's wrong, things not going well? I can beat him up if you want.”

Cadash laughed at the thought of Sera trying to beat up Thom. She came up to his chin and he probably outweighed her by about a hundred pounds if she were soaking wet. Still, she wouldn't count Sera out completely, her friend fought dirty. “No, we're fine, it's bloody Varric I'm annoyed with anyway. Maybe Cassandra has a point. Conniving little shit, indeed.”

“Varric? Mopey britches? He's been acting funny lately, I wondered what was up. Getting all... elfy, lately. Which is stupid for a dwarf.”

“Elfy dwarf. Yea, pretty stupid, huh?” Cadash shifted her weight to one elbow and reached her other hand out where Sera's own was splayed out on the roof. Her hand was smaller than her friend's but she saw now what Varric had been talking about. She didn't have a dwarf's hands. She had hands more like Sera's.

“So what got up his arse, then, if he's so annoying?”

“More bloody secrets. He's told me now, and I don't really know what to think about it. It doesn't really matter though, just a bunch of shit, like you always say. Who cares about the past?”

Sera took a cookie and munched on it. Cadash could feel the weight of Sera's gaze on her back.

“Well, you do, for one. It's stupid, but everyone cares about stupid things sometimes. You wanna tell me? You don't have to. But you can if you want.”

Cadash dragged herself upright and looked down at the soldiers milling about in the yard, at the servants going to and fro across the grounds, from one part of the castle to another on their daily errands.

“Found out who my dad was. Is, rather.”

“What, that bastard who did a runner when you were a baby? Who cares about him?”

“Varric does, I guess. It's his brother Bartrand.”

“What, the one who went mad over that red lyrium idol they dug up from the deep roads years ago? Heard Varric talking about him once. Don't envy you there. I wouldn't lose sleep over that arsehole.”

“Varric wants to make me his heir, though. That means the entire House Tethras. As soon as Bartrand's dead, which seems likely soon he says, he'll be the official head of house, and he wants to put my name down as the next in line.”

“...oh. That's.... something, I guess? Do you actually want all that shite?”

Cadash shrugged. She didn't know what she wanted. She couldn't think that far ahead, her imagination rebelled when she tried to. Would she survive this battle with Corypheus? Would any of them? She knew, intellectually, that the Inquisition could not last forever. If she didn't die, the day would come when she wasn't The Inquisitor anymore, and maybe not even the Herald. The crisis would pass and everyone would go away again, and forget all about her. She hoped Thom would stay. On days when she was feeling more optimistic, she'd daydream about a cabin somewhere with him, away from crowds of demanding people, away from cataclysmic threats to the world. Maybe they could get even get a dog.

Sera leaned over until her head was almost touching the roof and peered at Cadash's face where she was staring at her hands in her lap, now fighting off a sudden, unwanted impulse to cry. “Li'l Beardy? Don't let this shite eat you, alright? If you don't want it, just tell him so. He can find someone else.” Sera reached over and pulled one of her hands from her lap and held it while Cadash sniffled pathetically.

Cadash squeezed Sera's hand between them and looked up at the sky, the puffy white clouds they'd been laughing at earlier pushing overhead more swiftly now as the wind kicked up. “Found something else out too, dunno if it even matters, though. It's kind of funny, actually.” Cadash wiped a sleeve over her damp eyes. “My mother never said anything about her parents but they were all from Denerim, like you were. Apparently my grandfather was from the alienage there.”

“What, the tree and all that shite? Yer grandad was an elf, then?” Sera snorted in disbelief. “Really? Didn't know that was even possible.”

“Yeah, funny, huh? I never met him anyway, he died during the Blight. Who knows though, we could be like, cousins or something, and not even know it...”

Sera swung their linked hands between them for a minute, rolling the idea through her head. “Yea, yea we could be. I mean, my parents were from there, and your grandad was, so we totally could be, who would know? Not like there's many left from before the blight these days. Never had a cousin before. Just.. _her_. Yea, alright, we're cousins. Don't care if anyone doesn't like it.”

Cadash smiled for the first time since Varric had broken the peace of her morning. “Yea, me neither. Everyone can just piss right off.”

 

* * *

 

It was mid afternoon by the time Cadash bid Sera farewell. The day was sunny but was growing windier and she'd fled the castle in nothing but a thin shirt and trousers and was feeling chilled now. Lunchtime was long past, but she'd filled up on “us cookies” on the roof and decided she'd wait for supper rather than pester the kitchen staff.

What an odd day it had been. She'd started the day as an orphan and ended it with an uncle and a whole cavalcade of cousins she knew Varric had scattered across the Free Marches and beyond. He'd talked about a few of them, a Vidar and a Thorold most often, but there were others. She didn't want to think about Bartrand at all and pushed the image of a gaunt, confused man miles away out of her mind. She wasn't sure what to think about any of it and her emotions were a churning confusion at the moment.

And Cousin Sera, sort of. It was kind of a joke, really, just an off-hand what-if, but the idea wouldn't leave her. Sera had found it amusing, maybe appealing even. It wasn't always easy to tell exactly what Sera was thinking until she said it. Who really could know, though? So many elves in Denerim had perished before and during the Blight. History wasn't Cadash's strong suit but she'd picked up something of the drama surrounding Logain and his cronies, and the betrayal of the Grey Wardens during the Blight. Half the alienage in Denerim had been rounded up and sold into slavery at one point, right under the noses of the rest of the city who'd been fed some tale about a plague. Not that many of them would have even cared if they had known.

Elfy shit. Dwarfy shit. Seems Cadash had even more “shite” now, as Sera would put it. Something she could mull over more deeply when Corypheus was dead and the world returned to a comfortably mundane status quo.

In the meantime, she owed Thom an apology for her earlier fit of temper, which he had not really earned. And if she were honest, maybe Varric also, even if he sort of had. Maybe after, she'd go looking for pink flowers.

 


End file.
